


Laws of Motion

by Argyle



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Blood, Blood Drinking, Dream Sex, Dream Sharing, Established Relationship, F/M, Fake Science, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Modern Era, Monsters in love, Old Married Couple, Retired Monster Trope, Vampire Sex, Vampires, Wolves, american west, supernatural powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:00:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26143735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: It isn't the fifteenth century anymore. Hell, it isn't even the twentieth century. For every action, there is a consequence. For every misstep, there is a price. In other words: CCTV is a vampire's worst nightmare.And so they too must adapt.Or: Dracula and Agatha enjoy their retirement—especially the bits where they get to blow things up.
Relationships: Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

Agatha drains the remains of the decanter into the two wine glasses sitting on her desk.

It's not as fresh as she'd like: a fortnight has gone by since she last paid a visit to her discreet contact at the hospital. And it's certainly not plentiful enough to satisfy Dracula's own relentless appetite. But even _he_ has to admit that it's better than the pig's blood they're forced to endure when the hospital has no donations to spare – despite substantial increases in cash incentive – and it's all Agatha can do to keep him from running rampant in the streets—

It isn't the fifteenth century anymore. Hell, it isn't even the _twentieth_ century.

For every action, there is a consequence. For every misstep, there is a price.

In other words: CCTV is a vampire's worst nightmare.

And so they too must adapt.

And so this: two half-full glasses of cold blood. One for him. One for her. And damned if the barest whiff of it doesn't still make her fangs descend, tingling with anticipation...

"Is this the meteorology student again?" Dracula asks as Agatha sets a glass down beside him, not looking up from the schematic currently dominating his computer screen. The office is dim, and the machine casts his face in cool, almost otherworldly blue light.

"No," says Agatha. "We finished that bag a week ago. This is the file clerk."

Dracula sighs dramatically before downing the lot in one go. Then, after a long moment, he meets Agatha's gaze, his eyes flooded red. "A surprisingly torrid imagination on this one," he murmurs. "Quite scandalous, really."

"It's always the ones you least expect," Agatha retorts. Unlike her husband, she forces herself to sip slowly. Carefully. And while the bagged blood she procures only conjures an echo of the donor's life, it's still just that: _life_. She takes this one in with respectful contemplation; peruses it one page at a time like some beautifully illustrated text. Needing it to last.

It never does. She sighs, running her tongue over her teeth to collect the last of it. Then, just as she sets her empty glass down, Dracula gets his hands round her waist and pulls her to him. She fits neatly onto his lap, her knees tucked to either side of his legs on the leather desk chair.

"That's interesting, coming from the former nun."

"So says the _beast_ ," Agatha retorts, and before Dracula can get another word in edgewise, she closes in on him, pressing her mouth against his. He opens to her deliciously. His tongue slides against hers before purposely nicking against one of her fangs, and the taste of the resulting trickle of blood – impossibly rich and deep and _old_ – makes her moan.

Dracula pulls back enough to let out a short, breathy laugh. His hands are in her hair, stroking the strands back from her neck, and she sighs as he nips at her cheek, her jaw, her throat.

Then something on the computer screen catches her attention. She frowns, lifting herself up a bit. "Is that the lab?"

"Mhmm," Dracula purrs against Agatha's skin.

"I thought the spectrometer was going to have its own room."

Dracula sighs and disentangles himself, tilting his head and reaching for the computer mouse. He expands the image. "This is the laboratory's first sublevel, my dear. The spectrometer room you requested is on the _third_ sublevel, right next to the suite containing the electron microscope you insisted we splurge on."

"It isn't a splurge if it's necessary for my research." Agatha tilts her head, examining the schematic more closely. There are notes indicating where the centrifuge, balance, and hematological analysis equipment will be placed within the main lab area, plus two processing rooms, a variable temperature chamber, and another for sterilization.

The thought of building a lab to her exact specifications now, after all this time, fills her not just with excitement—but also dread. What if she fails? What if they truly are cursed, and there _is_ no treatment for the disease of vampirism?

Perhaps gleaning the thought from Agatha's mind as one would rub dew from grass – or perhaps simply knowing her too well – Dracula looks up at her and says with maddening charm, "If there's anyone who can do it, it's you."

"You'd really allow your thirst to be tempered? You'd let me cure you?"

Dracula's eyes widen, and for a moment Agatha catches sight of the wild, wanton creature who first bared himself before the gates of the convent. "Darling," he whispers, and again, there's that delightful promise of danger which she has from that night on found entirely irresistible, "you already have."

Agatha licks her lips. "Prove it," she goads him. Then she slides off his lap and retreats from the room, making her way down the hall to their bedroom.

"I have to submit the revised plans to the contractor by start of business," Dracula calls after her, once more preoccupied by his work. "You know how much is riding on them completing the job before winter sets in and the pass becomes inaccessible..."

And he's right. Certainly, he is. It took them several years' worth of searching to find this property—a horrific bastion of glass, concrete, and steel nested deep within a thousand acre plot of pristine forest in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, formerly owned by an eccentric billionaire who'd taken it upon himself to reverse engineer the human genome in order to save himself from a lifetime of poor decisions. Hence the three sublevels' worth of prime lab space.

He failed. The compound sat empty for nearly a decade before it appeared on Dracula and Agatha's proverbial radar, and they spent the next eighteen months negotiating the purchase details, permits, and renovations.

But it is, indeed, well suited to their current needs.

As have all the homes they've shared since they washed up together on the shore at Whitby. Dracula unrepentant. And Agatha unwavering.

Furious beyond all belief, but somehow still needing to _know_ him.

And then simply needing him.

At first, they split their time between Carfax Abbey and a terraced house in the city proper. Then, as the years began to roll by in earnest, they began to accumulate as many homes as they did aliases, each a pearl strung one after the next upon the thread of time—

Castle Dracula, first and foremost, though upon recognizing so much death there, so much spilled blood, Agatha was outspoken in her revulsion of the place, and eventually even Dracula became almost reticent of it. Then there was the river barge in Paris; the floor-encompassing hotel suite in Hong Kong; the chalet at the foot of Mount Blanc; the flat in Tunis; the painted lady in San Francisco; plus others besides.

And currently, their cottage on the Dorset Coast, a three-hundred-year-old thatch and stone structure surrounded by a modest garden and situated on a high cliff above the Jurassic coastline beach, abutting the sea.

Even now, the humid, salty air wafts in through the open window. Agatha breathes deeply of it as she undresses and slips beneath the coverlet. _Five minutes,_ she thinks. _I'll give him five minutes._ Then she takes the well-thumbed copy of _Kristin Lavransdatter_ from her nightstand, sets it open on her lap, and pointedly, if distractedly, starts to read.

Suddenly, and seemingly by its own volition, the lamp clicks off, and the room is thrown into near darkness. But Agatha's vision is excellent. Her vampiric blood allows her to make out even the most minute details nesting between each shade and shadow. She sets her book aside and waits for the door to swing open...

It doesn't. Nor can she hear any other telling sounds, footsteps in the hall or otherwise.

"Vlad?" she calls out. And then, receiving no response, she tugs on the line of their telepathic bond, demanding of him, _Come to me._

Dawn is less than an hour away, and thin, silvery light has begun trickling round the curtains, dappling the floor. But then again, no: it isn't light, or not only, for here and there she can pick out the glinting, gleaming shimmer of mist. She stares at it, a wry smile playing over her lips, before it gradually starts to dissipate.

For a long moment, there's nothing. Until. _Oh._ She shivers, and the fine hairs at her nape stand on end. Slowly, so slowly, the coverlet begins to shift, moving upwards from the foot of the bed until it's pulled back entirely, and there it is again—

There _he_ is.

Still an incorporeal mist, little more than a wisp, but so too somehow substantial. His presence, his weight, is palpable above her. Oh, but it's been a good while since he pulled this old favorite from his bag of tricks. She shivers to feel the cool puff of his breath against her throat. And then—nothing.

Agatha groans, already tingling with arousal. "I suppose you're just going to torment me until sunrise?" she asks the empty room, clenching her fingers into the sheet beneath her.

Dracula's answering laughter is faint but unmistakable. Infuriatingly unhurried, the mist rematerializes. Again, he drifts over her. She feels him caress the skin beneath her jaw... down to her clavicle and breasts. The suggestion of his tongue laves round one nipple, then the other, coaxing each to hardness before drifting towards her belly, and at last down to her core: he flickers over her clit and then within her folds. Tasting her.

And then something quite like a _bite_ comes down upon her inner thigh.

With a gasp, Agatha arches against the bed. Unseen hands hook beneath her knees to lift and spread her legs apart, and then all at once he's inside her, hard and full and thick. The pressure is sudden—and so fucking welcome.

She lets out a low moan, reaching forward though there's still nothing to grab. Nowhere to gain purchase but the bed as he begins to rock forward and back. "Please, Vlad..."

His voice seems to come from across a great distance: "Hmm? You'll need to be more specific."

"Bastard," she hisses. And then: "Let me see you."

Dracula laughs again, but soon takes shape above her. His hair is wonderfully tousled, and she knows that this is deliberate – reforming, he can hone his appearance as he wishes – but no less appealing. His eyes bore into hers, gleaming red. "Hello, Agatha," he rumbles.

Agatha arches up to kiss him in a collision of teeth and tongues. Then she reaches around him and gets her claws into his back, pushing her heels into the bed and deftly flipping them both over.

Is anything she does ever truly surprising to him? They are, after all, linked in mind and blood and body. If he wishes it, she can be an open book to him—and he her. But the delightfully shocked look on his face, the twined wonderment and adoration and _hunger_ , belies all this. She drinks in the sight of him. The knit of his brow. The space between his lips, exposing half-extended fangs. The way short puffs of unnecessary, unconscious breath heave in and out of him as she rides him, setting their pace.

"God, Agatha," he huffs. "You're beautiful."

She snorts, "Flatterer."

Neither of them lasts long after that. Dracula's hands stroke up Agatha's flanks before settling on her hips, and his fingers groove into her lean flesh as he spills inside her. Still, he continues to rock upwards until she comes too, gasping, tossing her head back as she's flooded core to chest to toe with the pure pleasure of it.

For a long moment, she remains there, before realizing she's accidentally bitten her lip open. Dracula pulls her to his side, sliding his softening cock out of her as he licks the blood from her mouth. "Waste not, dear wife."

He holds her to him, his fingers combing through her hair, and she presses her cheek against his chest. He smells faintly of the clove soap she bought him. And beneath that, earthy and clean and nothing if not himself. The best of the vampires, she'd said, so long ago now. The cleverest.

And what does that make her?

After a while, his hand drops to hers and he begins to absentmindedly worry at her wedding band—a dragon, sun, and star atop a field of crimson, the mate for his own ring. His cool fingers work round and round, gently warming the gold.

"A penny for your thoughts," she says.

"Oh, surely they're worth more than that," he chuckles. And then: "What if we stay on here for another year or two? You've said it yourself: the roses won't take care of themselves."

Even now, Agatha can make out their sweet scent as it rises from the dawn-blushed garden. She can hear the finches and sparrows, and beyond that, the shorebirds, gulls and cormorants; and beyond that, the crash of waves upon the sand.

She sighs. "The neighbors have been gossiping about us." Or more than usual. That they're rarely to be seen during daylight. That they always refuse offers to visit for tea or cocktails. That they lack social media accounts, or indeed, an internet footprint of any kind. That, in the fifteen years they've lived there, they've scarcely aged a day.

"I could kill them," Dracula offers, hopefully. For his part, it's been a decade since he took a human life in order to slake his thirst, and it was a rare occurrence long before that.

"No," Agatha says, at last.

And he agrees, his voice deceptively soft, "No."


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't long after Agatha became a vampire that she began to experiment on herself.

And why shouldn't she? For so many years, from beneath a nun's habit and out of one, she devoted her life to the study of the strange and unusual. The dark and evil. The dead and undead. 

That she suddenly, if horrifically, had in her own person a willing subject on whom she might study her conjectures – and at last begin to make sense of the legends – was a magnificently exciting prospect.

So too, all the better that such activities irritated Dracula. He threatened to punish her, to which she'd needle him in return, "What could you do to me that's worse than what you have already done?"

"Darling Agatha, my creativity is limitless."

But for the most part, he simply let it go with a grumble and a scowl and left her alone to entertain herself as she wished... Though indeed, no amount of grousing on her maker's part would have stopped her, so determined was she to validate herself and prove him wrong about just what _exactly_ makes a vampire tick.

It went beyond proving a point.

It was a matter of the sustained likelihood of her own existence.

And so Agatha began slowly, with small, structured trials, to put herself in contact with crucifixes. Holy water. Sacramental bread. Garlic. All of which, to her delight, had no effect whatsoever on her vampiric senses or constitution.

Dracula was skeptical of her findings. Yet he heard her out.

Then she attempted to enter a domicile without invitation—and suffered no consequence. She was thrilled to confront him with this discovery, once more urging him to explain the brutal lengths he'd gone to in order to enter the convent.

Dracula begrudgingly admitted that perhaps, far back on the line of his own history, it was not always so.

"When?" she demanded of him. " _Why_ would you succumb to such a nonsensical fixation? Do you fear humans that much? Or is it merely their opinion of you which terrifies?"

To which his reply was only icy silence.

Of course, some rules of the beast _did_ turn out to be rooted in necessity. Dracula warned her against attempting to wean herself off of blood, but still she sketched out a plan in which she would begin to consume human food: nothing extravagant, just wine and white loaf to start. To _start_ —

What hubris. Agatha's body rebelled after the very first swallow. Dracula had the good grace to limit his judgement to a roll of his eyes before holding her against him when she began to quake in earnest, his arms bound firmly about her chest as she was violently sick.

When it subsided, he'd brushed the hair back from her face. And he looked at her. Really _looked_ at her. "Agatha Van Helsing," he rumbled, the sound sending a frisson of pleasure up her spine. Quite unconsciously, she leaned into his touch. His smile was no less dangerous than it had been the first time she encountered it. "You do love to play with fire, don't you?"

Oh, but he didn't know the half of it.

Agatha's next experiment dealt with no less than holy retribution itself.

Or so Dracula was wont to describe it—but again, he always was rather overdramatic.

"It's happened before, then?" she asked, studying his expression for any sign of trepidation—or deceit. "You've been left incapacitated by the sun?"

"I've lived as a vampire for nearly five hundred years. Don't you think I would have left the darkness behind if I could?"

And this answer said everything and nothing.

Less than a week later, she stepped into the bright morning light. They'd been in the cellar, readying themselves for sleep, when Agatha was suddenly overcome by revulsion at the sight of her earth-lined box. She turned heel and dashed back upstairs before Dracula reached her, but by then she was already over the threshold, out the door and onto the bustling pavement in front of their north London terraced house—

"Agatha, no!"

Agatha turned to him. "Wait," she said, "and see."

He shook his head, plainly aghast. But he did wait. He waited as she held her hands before her, stroking her palms over her bare arms – the morning air was so damp and fragrant and fresh – up her throat to her cheeks, her temples. She shielded her eyes as she had done so many times as a mortal, casting a shadow across her brow and turning her face towards the sun. He waited as the late June light fell over the full length of her body, and she was not burned.

He waited.

And she turned to him and laughed. God, it was so good to be right.

*

"Yes, all right. We'll see you tonight," Agatha says, pulling her phone from her ear and ending the call. Then she sighs.

A familiar ache – part fondness and part regret – pangs in her chest. Their office is crowded with packed boxes which throw sharp shadows against the walls. Here and there, drop-clothed furniture peeks out from behind the stacks, enhancing the apparitional quality of the scene. And she too standing amongst it all: long undead, tired, and hungry.

"Tonight," she whispers. Then she sets out in search of Dracula.

For once she takes the long way through the house rather than simply locating her husband via a yank on their shared mental tether, stepping from one room to the next as if to memorize every stitch of the place—as if her vampiric brain would allow her to forget—as if she would never see it again, which was of course silly: they return to all of their homes eventually.

Even if it's decades or more, they return.

After a while, she finds him in the library, a space which the estate agent assured them was in fact a generously-sized guestroom considering the advanced age of the property. But as they never had guests, they filled it floor-to-ceiling with books of every kind: old and new, fiction and non, poetry and science and philosophy and history.

It also houses Dracula's quite impressive collection of vinyl records.

His hand rests flat atop a pile of them, and a couple sit to the side of the turntable, askew and out of their sleeves. The needle has reached the center of his current selection – Duke Ellington, by the look of it – and the speakers are emitting a low, rumbling hum which brings to mind the dozing purr of some great, wild cat.

But Dracula's attention lies firmly elsewhere: warm, dust-moted evening light streams through the leaded glass windowpane, gilding the cool planes of his flesh. His eyes are closed, and his mouth is gently curved. He stands very still.

Even after all the years since she led him into the light, the time he spent without it was far longer; she loves to catch him basking.

A long moment passes before he returns to himself. And then: "All packed?"

"As I'll ever be," Agatha says, walking to him. She slides her arm around his waist and settles into the crook of his arm. "I've never understood how one can accumulate so many _things_."

"You only say that because you spent so many years with naught but your blessed rosary and book."

"I had more possessions than all the other sisters combined," she scoffs, "considering my laboratory."

"Yes, I'm sure they envied you your jars of dead frogs."

This successfully coaxes a laugh from her, and he pulls her closer to him, resting his chin on the top of her head. She admits, softly, "I bribed the village boys with spice cake to catch them for me."

"And where did you come upon spice cake?"

"Sister Dalma, who worked in the kitchens... She said she'd never had such an excellent backrub before I came along."

"Wicked, fiendish _temptress_ ," Dracula says, twisting Agatha in his arms to kiss her soundly. Then he reaches sideways to get the record flipped and reset the needle in the groove; after a pause, the sweet, droning sound of horns fills the room. He extends a hand to her.

Agatha takes it. "As if you've ever in your life resisted even one temptation put before you."

"Naturally. What'd be the fun in that?"

They sway through one song, then another, before she finally tells him, "I called Byron."

Dracula stops in his tracks. Agatha can make out a low rumble in his throat: the warning growl of a wolf. "You what?"

"Come, there's no need for that," she admonishes. "We can't get out of London unnoticed without his help. You know he's the most well-connected vampire in the country."

"That's one way of putting it."

"You're just being territorial."

Dracula narrows his eyes. "He wants you and makes no attempt to hide it."

"He wants you too, darling."

"I'd just as soon eat him alive."

Agatha laughs shortly. "I think he'd rather like that," she says, pulling him back into their dance. " _Please_. Let's not spend our last night here getting into a row."

It takes several seconds before the anger in Dracula's red-rimmed eyes shifts into something else entirely. His hands drop from Agatha's waist to firmly knead at her arse, and he catches her mouth in another sharp kiss. "How long do we have?"

"To get to the station? Maybe an hour."

"Then we'll take the car into town."

"What? I thought you were intent on leaving it under lock and key here," she says, but this at least is not worth the argument—especially when Dracula hoists her onto one of the larger boxes and begins undoing her blouse, at once leaning in to nip at her exposed throat. She begins to in turn flick his shirt buttons apart, eager to work her fingers into that dark thatch of chest hair.

"Oh," he hums, "I'm sure that's nothing the most well-connected vampire in the country, as you so generously phrased it, can't handle."

*

Within minutes of their first meeting, Byron had explained to Agatha that the people he fed from were not victims, but willing participants.

This was on the night of the winter solstice, soon to be 1932, and she and Dracula were on the prowl at a fancy dress party in Kensington. Having observed Dracula scent out a young woman from the moment she set foot in the ballroom – and then discretely follow her out again, leaving Agatha alone by the punchbowl – a man crossed to Agatha and asked her for a dance.

In all honesty, she had not at that point met many other vampires. But she immediately recognized him as one. Lack of heartbeat notwithstanding, she had no trouble smelling the blood on him. But that's not why she took his outstretched hand—or not only.

It was that by Dracula's direction, she had of late spent immense time and effort learning to make herself go unnoticed in a crowd. Having this powerful glamour so effortlessly dispelled was, quite simply, fascinating. 

The vampire was dressed all in black, and the top half of his pale face was obscured by an elaborately feathered raven mask. He smiled, showing off his sharp teeth, as the music started up. "We've been watching you... and your maker."

"My husband, you mean."

"Yes. As you say." The man's stormcloud blue eyes met hers. "You two have left behind eight revenants in the past year alone. Do you understand the risk associated with such reckless consumption?"

"I—I always take precautionary measures—" Agatha faltered, trying to concentrate on her dance steps. Though she and the other vampire were of a similar height, her heels made her a couple of inches taller than him, and he was, she belatedly realized, working to disguise a faint limp. Finally, she ventured, "What do you mean by 'we'?"

"Oh, nothing less than the Vampiric Brotherhood of Albion." He smiled again, wryly, perhaps catching her disbelief. "The name was not of _my_ choosing, rest assured. I think... Well. It may be easier to simply _show_ you."

With that, he dragged a fang across his plush lower lip, drawing a bead of blood. Then he leaned forward to brush his mouth against hers—

And suddenly, she knew. Byron. Lord fucking _Byron_ , the very same man whose poetry, person, and penchant for sex had captured the imagination of half of Europe before he was yet twenty-five; who was besieged by scandal at thirty; and who died whilst fighting Ottoman invaders in Greece before forty, all more than a century before.

Or so the world was led to believe. She next envisioned him seated at a long table, surrounded by a dozen other vampires of varied age, sex, and race. They were, it seemed, holding a debate.

"A council?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Something like that," said Byron. "We've worked very hard to establish a reasonable set of guidelines for our kind. And we've pledged to do good for humanity as well, when we can. This is an interest you share with us, is it not? I'm sure there is much we can learn from one another." And somberly: "You needn't kill, you know."

"Yes," Agatha agreed. Then, unexpectedly starstruck and quite unable to stop herself, she said, "I've been an admirer of your work for as long as I can remember."

Byron laughed. "Thank you, Doctor Van Helsing." By then, the song had ended. He bowed and escorted Agatha back to the side of the dancefloor—where Dracula was daintily wiping at his mouth with a handkerchief. From behind his domino mask, his eyes gleamed red.

*

Agatha and Dracula stand side by side, staring at the glowing, cursive-scripted letters above the café awning: _Albe_. A neat sign on the door proclaims that the place has won a TripAdvisor "West London Top 5" award for wine bars, cellars, and tasting rooms three years in a row.

They share a glance before Agatha shrugs, offering, "Eternity drags."

Despite it being a weeknight, there's a fair amount of people inside, groups of young professionals lounging on midcentury modern-style sofas over bottles of wine and tapas plates. It's been some time since Agatha last set foot in a human restaurant. The galvanized planes, echoing ceilings, and gratuitous flatscreen television sets of the noughties had waged a veritable assault on her finetuned vampiric senses, more effectively warding her than any conjuring of old.

But the space which stretches out before her, with its elegant furnishings and warm, candle-like light, quiet music and quieter conversation, is far from that. It is, she realizes, quite _relaxing_. She's at once put effortlessly and completely at ease.

Meanwhile, her husband glances eagerly from patron to patron. His nostrils flare as he takes in their varied scents. She squeezes his hand to break his concentration, not giving him time for his eyes to flood red. He grins wolfishly. "Old habits."

After a brief exchange with the host – Agatha explains that the proprietor is expecting them – they're escorted to the back of the dining room, through an ornately carved teak door, and up a flight of stairs. They walk down a hall to another door.

"He'll be with you in a moment," the host says before retreating downstairs.

"Like Hell he will." Dracula raises a fist to rap on the door, but then as though on command, it swings inward, revealing a lavishly decorated studio apartment, at the center of which sits Byron himself.

He rises from his chair and crosses the room to greet them. "Agatha, what a pleasure it is to see you," he says, taking her hand and kissing it. Then, turning to Dracula: "You as well, Vlad."

"It's good to see you too, Byron. You seem well," says Agatha, looking the other vampire over. He's back to wearing his hair long: the chestnut curls are an affectation which undoubtedly suits him, and along with the vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt and form-fitting jeans, he could easily pass for a young mortal lately up from university. But still she presses: "Are you?"

Byron smiles, motioning them to the sofa. "As well as can be expected," he says, settling back into his chair across from them. "The bar keeps me occupied."

"Yes," says Dracula, "I imagine the dissolution of the vampiric council must have freed up your schedule considerably."

Anger flashes across Byron's features, twisting his expression, before receding again. "Considerably," he agrees at length. "Though I must say I never understood your loathing of our little group."

"No? A bunch of whiny immortals stuck in a room together comparing the length of their fangs?"

Agatha places a calming hand on Dracula's thigh. But she must agree, "You did argue quite a lot."

"If you'd ever bothered to join us, you would know it wasn't always like that. The past century has not proved favorable to our kind."

"Royalty?" Dracula offers.

"Come, Vlad. You are no more a count now than I am a baron. And besides, a lack of strong leadership was but one of the council's problems." Byron sighs, glancing between them. "Anyway, it's over now. Time marches ever onward." And then, lightly: "Forgive me my poor manners—it's not often that I play host here in my rooms. You'll be traveling a great distance soon, and I mean to do what I can to assist you. Might I tempt you to a light repast?"

A couple of minutes later, they're joined by a young human, perhaps only twenty-five, and so very strong and sanguine and _warm_. "Hello, Liam," Byron greets him, pulling him in for a kiss before guiding him to sit between Agatha and Dracula on the sofa.

Agatha shoots Dracula a puzzled look before turning to Byron, but it's Liam who speaks, "Byron told me he was having guests." He pulls his sleeve back from one arm, then the other, and holds them out in offering. "Please. Go ahead."

Dracula evidently doesn't need to be asked twice. None too gently, he pulls Liam's arm toward him, his long fingers snaking round the narrow wrist as he bends his head and bites down.

Liam lets out a little gasp and his eyes flutter closed in obvious arousal, and Agatha knows that she should be skeptical, or at the very least embarrassed; she knows she should refuse. But by _God_ , there's nothing else in the world as the scent of his blood hits her nose like the sweetest perfume. How long has it been since she fed from a live human? Five years? For all the gentleness she forces herself to display in taking Liam's arm, her eventual grip upon it is no more yielding than Dracula's.

"Thank you, Liam," she says, meaning it.

Then she sinks her fangs into Liam's taut, unblemished flesh and _moans_.

And then everything goes red.

After, Byron helps Liam to his feet and carefully leads him from the room, leaving Agatha and Dracula alone. He doesn't wait to drag her towards him, kissing her so deeply that what remains of the blood in their mouths comingles. Agatha gets a hand into his hair, needing the contact, wanting more. _God, Vlad,_ she tells him, _I could_ feel _you._

 _I know,_ he replies. _I know._

Byron has the good grace to give them ample time to recompose themselves. By the time he joins them, Dracula has set his car keys on the coffee table.

"Is this the Martin DB5?"

"No bloody joyriding, Byron."

Agatha lets out a laugh. She's feeling incandescent, alight in a way she hasn't for a long time. "He isn't joking," she chides. "He memorized the mileage before we parked it."

Byron holds his hand over his unbeating heart. "You have, as a bloodthirsty monster, my honest word. Not a scratch." He pockets the keys and settles back into his seat. Then he leans forward a bit, looking at them both in turn. "I've arranged a chartered flight for you to take to New York City. From there, you'll meet a vampire named..." he goes on to describe the steps they'll take before finally making it to their compound in Colorado. There's something trilling about it—like they're living in a spy novel.

But of course it's only that they too are bloodthirsty monsters, and the lengths they take to go about their lives without observation are simply a matter of survival.

Before they leave, Agatha turns to Byron, taking his cool, dry hand in her own and giving it a squeeze. "You've been a great deal of help. How can we thank you?"

He gives her a canny look. "Believe me, Doctor Van Helsing. If you are successful in your search for a cure... An answer to our self-limiting condition... It is _I_ who will forever be in _your_ debt."


	3. Chapter 3

It's been half a lifetime since Agatha and Dracula traveled as cargo.

And yet here they are, stretched side-by-side in a crate marked CONTENTS FLAMMIBLE: HANDLE WITH CARE.

It's narrow, scarcely longer than Dracula himself, fashioned of nondescript black polyethylene, and fortunately for its occupants – and Byron too, lest Agatha be forced to strangle him the next time they meet – well cushioned. The other vampire also had the foresight to supply them with charging stations and several flasks of blood.

Dracula began sipping from one of these the moment the box's lid closed and sealed and was locked from the inside. The scent makes Agatha's fangs throb. But she wants to keep her wits about her and at least wait until they're airborne to partake. She huffs out a breath and tries to concentrate on the medical journal she has pulled up on her phone.

Then: "Everything all right, my dear?"

"Yes," says Agatha. "Why?"

"You're scrolling very loudly." Agatha can hear the smile in Dracula's voice. Teasing. Smug. "Perhaps you'd have preferred to travel via British Airways like civilized beings. You know, making use of the tickets we bought two months ago."

"And risk another incident at Heathrow? We barely made it through security the last time we flew, and it's only worsened since then."

Dracula hums. "You used to adore flying."

And it's true: of all the technological marvels humanity had concocted during Agatha's long life, she loved traveling by passenger air – the simple, extraordinary act of staring from the window at cloud shadows over the far-flung landscape – best of all. But as with so many things, the encroaching limitations of their condition had robbed her of this too. Cameras, screeners, scanners, and facial recognition devices were problematic at the best of times... though Dracula _did_ have a knack for redirecting the trained sniffer dogs.

She's glad he doesn't press her on the matter, but he does continue, a bit wistfully, "I never minded going by box. In the old days, it was the generally the most practical way for our kind to get around... though after two months at sea, the ship's roster would have lost rather more than its resident population of rats." He chuckles, savoring the memory. "Ten hours, give or take, in the belly of a transatlantic cargo plane scarcely registers."

Then he leans in, his lips almost touching her ear, to whisper, "And there are so many delightful ways to pass the time."

Agatha shivers. Then she clicks her phone off and says, "My place or yours?"

 _Mine_ , Dracula growls directly into her mind, his mouth already quite occupied by biting her throat, and with practiced ease, he draws her into the velvet darkness of their shared dreamscape.

As always, it begins with just the two of them, spectral bodies in raw firmament. Then Dracula opens his hands—

And a world appears. Fully formed, evocative and vibrant.

Tonight, it's none other than Castle Dracula. Not as it is today, or even seventy years ago, largely reduced to ruins by Allied bombs. Nor as it was the first time she visited it, a decade after her turning, a palace ever-coiling before her like an ouroboros, a labyrinth in romantic decay.

But as it was during her husband's mortal life. Already centuries old by then, but well-maintained, with the vast number its of secrets – and its horrors – still to come.

They stand together on the highest battlement. The setting sun casts the sky in pulsating shades of crimson and rose, heaving with life as the land heaves with life, as the air shifts, saturated with the perfume of blossoms, stone fruits and apples and tender green leaf buds.

Dracula watches her expression. And then: "Not bad, eh?"

"It's beautiful," she agrees, reaching for his hand, allowing him to in turn pull her back against his chest and bury his nose in her hair. For a long moment, she watches the snowmelt-full rush of the river far below. Then she pulls away enough to turn and look him in the eye. "Was it ever really like this?"

"Yes," he says, "and no. Most days, I was too busy recovering from one battle or preparing for the next to really notice what the local flora was getting up to. This is more of an... illustration."

"Feeling sentimental, then? Returning to your place of origin just as we start down an entirely new path with no less than our very continued survival at stake..."

"You're not still trying to headshrink me after all these years, are you, Doctor Van Helsing? Surely by now you'll admit I'm a lost cause."

Agatha snorts and replies drolly, "Forgive me for maintaining an interest in my husband's mental health."

Dracula rolls his eyes and takes a seat on the bearskin and pillow-layered stone floor. Then he tugs Agatha down onto his lap and kisses her deeply. She leans into him, surprised to taste the flavor of her own blood on his lips which he managed to carry over from his waking state.

He's dressed in a long, embroidered cotton tunic plucked from some far-gone age, and she's in a quite modern black silk shift. Incongruous, maybe—but she doesn't care a whit, not when he's pushing the offending garments up and over each of their shoulders and away. 

Not when he's guiding her hips up enough for her to settle down on his beautifully erect cock so that he fills her completely.

Agatha hooks her arms around his neck, mouths the hollow of his collarbone, nuzzles his chest hair, luxuriating in the feel of him as he drives up into her and they settle into a rhythm. She knows him so very well, but still she's in equal turns awed and vexed by him. He anchors her within this unreal world, a dream as much as their very first chess game was a dream. But then, as now, it's nothing if not simply _them_.

*

The first time, to Agatha's great amazement, Dracula seemed almost shy.

Oh, he'd wanted her. He made no attempt to disguise the raw, animalistic hunger in his eyes—or the hardness in his trousers.

They'd just returned to their terraced house in London – a space which they shared out of necessity, for Agatha was still newly turned and likewise determined not to die of some avoidable blunder – both of them feeling incandescent, almost intoxicated from the night's feeding. Emboldened, Agatha reached forward to wipe a bit of blood from Dracula's cheek when he caught her hand and pulled her close, and quite out of nowhere, she was possessed by the idea that she might simply _lick_ the smear away. And so she did.

Dracula murmured approval, taking her fully in his arms and pressing his cool lips against hers. Then he rocked himself against her. And certainly, she'd gasped, shocked by how quickly things were progressing—but also because she knew she wanted this. She wanted _him_.

It had been decades since she last had sex with a man, but there was no mistaking the anticipation, the ache, the rippling pleasure of pure sensation.

And she was now truly a woman of the world, wasn't she?

Why shouldn't she permit herself this?

They made it to the bed, but barely. By then, they'd divested each other of most of their clothes, with Agatha's corset notably left in tatters on the hallway floor. She found herself stretched on her back with Dracula looming over her, and she couldn't help but drink in the sight of him, heretofore unseen since their spat in the convent courtyard.

He was unashamed of his body. But so too he was somehow unused using it in such a way as this, and he either couldn't or couldn't be bothered to hide his surprise when she took him in hand and began, slowly, steadily, to stroke him.

"God," he ground out. "For a nun, you're awfully good at seduction."

"Former nun, no thanks to you," she shot back, rubbing her finger over the precome which slicked the tip of his cock, still studying his wonderfully expressive reactions. Was it perhaps not shyness, then, but inexperience? Or was he simply out of practice? And so: "How long?"

"What?"

"How long has it been for you? Surely you must have been intimate with your other brides..."

Dracula shook his head.

"Mortals, then?"

"I sired five children," he told her, but haltingly, "when I was alive."

"But—"

Dracula cut her off with a kiss. Then he pulled back enough to say, "Look, can't we talk about this later?" and guided her hand, still grasping his cock, to her entrance.

"Yes," she said. And then, when he slowly slid himself into her, "God, _yes_."

And was this what they'd always been hurdling towards? 

She'd witnessed him perform such acts of incredible violence. She'd witnessed his face contort in rage. She'd witnessed him feed and feed and feed and remain unsated.

She'd witnessed him steal her away from the life she knew; keep her sedated, a captive to his own remorseless appetite; let her hang from the ship's mast; sink with her into the cold, dark waters of the North Sea—and rise again.

There was no getting around the fact that he had as well as murdered her. Could there ever be forgiveness for such a betrayal?

Again, yes. For perhaps he of all creatures would offer her the one thing she deemed truly necessary to endure immortality: love.

After, his arms folded around her as if they were made for such a purpose. His eyes were closed, and he smiled softly. The flickering light from the fireplace leant his still features the illusion of animation, golden-hued and full.

Not for the first time, Agatha was struck by how exquisite a creature Dracula was—how in repose, his violence was hushed.

*

Together, they awake to a knock on the lid of their crate.

Dracula reaches up to work the lock, and then slowly, deliberately, the lid lifts open.

A young-looking vampire – though of course looks can be deceiving – smiles down at them. "Welcome to New York. We've been expecting you," she says. "And we've heard so much about you."

Agatha smiles, pushing herself into a seated position. "Only good things, I hope."

"Are you kidding? You two are fucking celebrities! But don't worry: only a few of us even know you're here. Byron was specific on that point. Say, are you hungry?"

Agatha and Dracula share a glance, but it's Agatha who replies: "Famished."


End file.
